am power,' they said, 'so we can't give
more. It's a favor anyway to give it out at all.' That was my first
day's work. The next I went down to my place on Canal Street. They think
a good deal of me there, and they put me on drawers right away;
thirty-five cents a dozen for making them. I can make two dozen a day
sometimes, but fine ones not over a dozen, though they pay fifty cents.
You wonder how they make anything. I've been forewoman, and I know the
prices. Why, even at forty cents a pair they make on them. Twenty-one
yards of cloth at five cents makes a dozen; that's $1.05; and eighteen
yards of edge at four and a half cents, that's eighty-one cents; and the
making thirty-five cents; that's $2.21. Thread and all, they won't cost
over $2.25, and they sell at wholesale at three dollars a dozen and
retail at $4.80. There's profit even when you think a cent couldn't be
made. Take skirts, three yards of cloth in each at six cents. They pay
thirty cents a dozen for tucking, twenty-five cents a dozen for
ruffling, and thirty cents for seaming,--eighty-five cents a dozen for
the entire skirt; and the cloth makes it, at eighteen cents apiece,
$3.01 for the dozen. Those skirts retail at sixty cents apiece, and
wholesale at fifty cents. There's profit on them all, no matter what
they say, for I've figured every penny over and over, down to the tape
and thread. But they swear to you they are ruined by competition, and so
the wages go down and down and down. Leave the city? I don't know how to
live anywhere else. I've never learned. It's something to be sure of
your work, even if it is starvation wages. But there's distress all
around me. I don't see what it means. There's a girl in the room next to
me, with an invalid mother. She does flannel shirts, but before she got
them she nearly starved on underwear. Now she earns a dollar a day, but
she works fourteen hours for it, seven cents an hour. That's nice pay in
a Christian land. Christian! Bah! I used to believe there was
Christianity, but I've given it up, like many another. There's just one
religion left, and that is the worship of money. The Golden Calf is God,
and every man sells his soul for a chance to bow to it. I don't know but
what I would myself. So far I've kept decent; I came of decent folks;
but it's no fault of many a man that I've worked for that I can say so
still. I've had to leave three places because they wouldn't let me
alone, and I stay where I am now becaus